But after a brief spell in the private sector, he took a job in January, 1984 as a campus organizer for the New York Public Interest Research Group (NYPIRG), according to the group's records. NYPIRG is one of a set of similar groups around the country. Obama mentions the organizing job in passing in Dreams for My Father; he doesn't mention the organization.

I put in some calls to the people he worked with that semester, and they recall him with the charisma and general impressiveness that now defines him.

"He was frighteningly coherent," said Chris Meyer, now a Consumer Union official, who interviewed him for the NYPIRG job. "I remember him interviewing with a presence and an assurance you just don't see in your average recent college grad."

"He was somebody that everybody took notice of," said Tom Wathen another former NYPIRG official now at the National Environmental Trust.

Obama's former supervisors recall hiring him to organize on the Harlem campus of the City University of New York as part of their campaign against the city's reliance on incinerators.

"We were knee deep in solid waste," Meyer said. "We were one of the groups that was focusing on trying to change New York City's recycling policies and the way we were doing that had to do with trying to get NYC weened away from incineration and trying to look at waste alternatives."

Both men recalled him as extremely good at the job.

"He did a very good job," said Wathen. "He revitalized the chapter, drew a lot of new students into it. Barack stood out because he had a certain amount of charisma that was kind of obvious."

But he left after the semester to work as an organizer for the Industrial Areas Foundation in Chicago.

"I take it he did not feel completely connected to the work he was doing," said Meyer, who says he did expect great things for Obama, if not exactly the presidency:

"I thought he'd be more likely running a large not-for-profit," he said.